Paul Starr

Paul Starr is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect. and professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Bancroft Prize in American history, he is the author of eight books, including Entrenchment: Wealth, Power, and the Constitution of Democratic Societies, which will be out next year.

Recent Articles

David Guralnick/Detroit News via AP Gretchen Whitmer gives her acceptance speech after being elected the next governor of Michigan, in Detroit. A re the Democrats, as so many people believe, moving left, or are they gravitating to the center? Actually, the results of this year’s primary and general elections show there is movement in both directions, setting the party up for future conflicts. Let’s look at the congressional results. Perry Bacon, Jr. at FiveThirtyEight makes the case that the Democrats are moving left by comparing their House membership in 2010, the last time they controlled the chamber, to their incoming membership. Eight years ago, the Progressive Caucus had 80 members, while the Blue Dog Coalition, the most conservative Democrats, had 54. But in 2019, according to Bacon, the Progressive Caucus will rise to 96, while the Blue Dogs will number only 24. By that measure, the House Democrats have moved sharply to the left. The picture looks different, however, if we...

Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Invision/AP The Weekly Standard 's founder and editor-at-large Bill Kristol speaks in Pasadena, California. T he news that the owner of the Weekly Standard may shut it down highlights how conservative political journalism and media continue to change as a result of one of the most important recent developments in American politics—the collapse of the center-right. A decade ago, as I recalled in an op-ed in The New York Times in October, prominent commentators confidently asserted that the United States is a “center-right country,” a claim that had some plausibility when George W. Bush was president. But since then, first under Barack Obama and now even more under Donald Trump, the center-right has lost influence nationally and even within the Republican Party, leaving many people with those views politically homeless. Indeed, as Republicans have moved right, what counts as “center-right” has moved further right too, from the Rockefeller Republicans of a half...

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, foreground, speaks at a news conference on pre-existing health conditions on Capitol Hill. Update (November 21, 2018): The Washington Post reports : Rep. Brian Higgins of New York said he had changed his mind [and endorsed Nancy Pelosi for speaker] after securing an “agreement in principle” that Democrats would undertake a “serious good faith effort” to advance legislation lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 50 as well as a trillion-dollar infrastructure blitz. In a statement, Pelosi praised Higgins … and said his proposal to allow Americans as young as 50 to “buy in” to Medicare is “central to this debate, as we work to build on the Affordable Care Act.” In the piece below published yesterday, I was urging Democrats to focus on early eligibility for Medicare as the most feasible and politically potent idea for substantially advancing health-care reform. Pelosi’s agreement to make a “serious good faith effort” on that...

AP Photo/Jeff Roberson Members of the audience cheer as President Donald Trump leaves the stage at the end of a campaign rally in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. J ust as he had in 2016, Donald Trump defied the conventional wisdom about how to win in 2018 by making inflammatory statements about immigrants and refugees. This year, when he might have emphasized the state of the economy, he chose instead in the final weeks of the campaign to whip up hysteria about the immigrant caravan in Mexico, claim that refugees bring in gangs and terrorists, and call for an end to birthright citizenship. Trump’s incendiary rhetoric has renewed a debate about whether he and other Republicans who have made similar appeals to their base are acting impulsively from the gut or according to a rational political logic. The results of the 2018 election now provide more evidence on that question, though not a definitive answer. Before the election, Matt A. Barreto—a UCLA political scientist who is a co-founder of...

(AP Photo/Matt Rourke) Stars of David are displayed in front of the Tree of Life Synagogue with the names of those killed in the shooting in Pittsburgh. N ot all shocks should surprise us. When political leaders summon up the dark forces of racial hatred and xenophobia, violence is bound to follow, whether or not they order it directly. The murder of 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue may have seemed like a throwback to the bloody chapters of the past, but it carried an unmistakable, present-day stamp of presidential influence. Shortly before the accused assassin, Robert Bowers, entered the Tree of Life synagogue Saturday morning, he posted a message on social media identifying HIAS, the Jewish agency that resettles refugees, as the immediate source of his fury: “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” Where would Bowers have gotten the idea that refugees are “invaders” who “kill our...